Uncuffed

The start

She wakes up, drowned by her own blankets and pillows. Her head hurts as she starts to sit up slowly with a small, quiet groan. Ugh. Barely audible in the humble room. A few papers are scattered on the queen-sized bed- quite large for a girl that small. Sat up on her bed she notices that her alarm is still ringing loudly, probably waking her parents. Beep beep beep. The ringing makes her groan louder, it hurts her ears which are far too sensitive to be humanly possible- at least in her opinion.

She stays in an awkward position for a few moments, too lazy to turn the ringing off. Footsteps appear in the hallway, scuffling around lightly. Mom's footsteps. When they come to a halt, the white hallway lights peer through the crevices of her door, it makes her squint, coincidentally lining with her right eye. Footsteps show again, getting louder as they descend the stairs.

She crawls to the left end of her bed and gets up to press the button on the clock. It was blinking too bright of a red in the darkness of her room. Her large eyes squint into slits as the hallway lights become brighter.

"Get up and turn that fucking alarm off." She looks at the black box making the noise. Beep beep beep. She turns her eyes to her doorway and sees a figure, quite taller than her, by it. It was her brother, rubbing his eyes with a tired look. "We're gonna be late for the first day." She groans again, load enough for her brother to hear. The first day. "Mom's already downstairs."

Her brother opens the door wider so more light would seep into the room. Annoying, it was the first word that popped into her mind, just like this morning. He leaves the doorway to enter another room. The girl walks up to turn the switch beside it on and slams the door into its frame. A curse is heard the room across hers. She stops her alarm, allowing the 8:13 to stop blinking.

She dresses up into clothes that were randomly thrown on her plastic chair from the night before. She tries to tame her bed head, but she gives up and puts her long hair into a messy ponytail. As she heads out the door to climb down the stairs her brother shortly follows. The morning is quiet other then the crunching of the cereal the siblings ate and the sound of the meat frying in the pan.

"I want you two to be careful today." Their mother breaks the silence. She was too serious for her children's liking, not matching her natural personality.

"Yes mom, we know." The girl hisses.

"Cassidy, mom's just scared-"

"No, Jeremy, you guys should already know what to do, sorry." The mother turns back to the meat, "Today might be the day..." You say that all the time.

"Mom, you're stressing this out," Jeremy takes another bite of his cereal. "If it didn't happen for a whole 15 years how could it happen today?"

"You know it doesn't work like that," Cassidy puts her spoon down, "stop making a joke out of th-." Her hoarse voice rising.

"I'm not making a joke out of this." Her brother snaps at her. He puts his hand down, letting the spoon fall to the floor, creating a small, milky mess. "After what happened to Sam... It's not like I didn't want to do anything about it!" His hand slams down.

No one liked talking about what happened to their neighbour, so they allowed their silence to take over the morning.

-----

After washing up and packing their things, Cassidy and her brother stand by the doorway. "We gotta do this good-"

"Well," She interrupts her brother.

"Since it's my last year." He ignores his sister's correction, making her slightly more irritated. Their mother hurriedly walks up to the door with an old silver Canon. She was dressed with a gleaming badge that made anyone she met respect her. "And you can use a new camera, you know, we don't have to use the same one each time."